Thursday 29th October

This week both Schnee and Depesando have shown childhood photos on their blogs.
So here is my offering.

I was four and a half and it is my first ever school photo.
Thanks to head lice, I didn’t have to suffer all that hair for too long.
If you look closely, it also shows evidence of that ‘Stealth Ginger’ gene I’ve told you about.
That now, thanks to a badly designed reproductive and endocrine system, is coming out in my ‘Beard’.
Yes ladies and gentlemen, I have fucking random hairs on my fucking face!

I remember the picture being taken like it was yesterday.
Him - Say cheese!
Me - Why?
Him - Just say cheese, there’s a good girl.
Me - Ok. But why?
Him - *Sigh* It’s to make you smile.
Me - But it’s not funny.
Him - It’s not a joke. It’s to make your mouth make a smiley shape.
Me - I can do that on my own, why don’t you just say ‘Smile please’?
(At this point the just stared at me for ages.)
Me - Shall I smile now?
Him - *Sigh* Yes please.

It’s weird looking at this picture because I don’t recognise the kid at all.
I don’t have that nose anymore. Stepfather number 1, hockey and boxing have changed that beyond all recognition.
The eyes are different, I don’t know why, less tired I suppose.

I am off to Cork in the morning for a 50th Birthday party, which ‘isn’t a party but a family gathering’ but IS in fact, a party.
Just because Mr Quinn keeps repeating that it is not a party doesn’t actually make it so.

A gift from Mad Matt. I think he may have hit on the supplies for Halloween next year.
I love the warning on the packaging!

Instinct

What I love about my friends is that there is always ‘something else’ to find out about them that I didn’t know before.
Yesterday I found out that Crisp-e can spend endless hours stroking a female cat (Stop It!) but can’t with a Tom cat because it is and I quote,
“A bit gay!”
Matt and I hurt ourselves laughing!

We discussed what we’d do it we found ourselves in a ‘28 Days Later’ scenario.
Rotheray’s shop of guns and dangerous shit was my choice.
Then the chemist, then Tesco.
Matt STILL had concerns about me having a gun, EVEN in a Zombie situation.
Harsh.
Crisp-e seemed overly bothered that at Sleepy Mansions we were too far from anywhere he could easily get a Chainsaw.
A fucking Chainsaw?
See what I mean about being constantly surprised by mates?

We talked about the ‘Fight or Flight Instinct’ and came to the conclusion Crisp-e and I do not have the “OR” bit of that particular instinct.
We just fight.

My example was a ‘Scary’ fairground ride my sister and two cousins went on when I was about seven.
It was a Dodgem/Ghost Train affair that drove the four of us through the doors into a horrible undersea world.
All sorts of shit dangled down and touched our faces, popped out of walls and was squirted at us.
Then as we came into an open area, the car stopped dead.
Nothing happened.
We were looking at each other, frightened, wondering what the fuck was going on.
Was it broken? What did we do?
Then a ‘Ghost’ appeared, dressed like an old-fashioned deep-sea diver, with the big old, round metal helmet thing.
When he started moaning and groaning, my sister and cousin A started screaming.
As he got nearer, they got louder and more panicked.
When he was within two strides of us, I was out of the car and kicking the absolute fuck out of his legs.
This is also the point when the ride was timed to restart.
Which it did.
The other three were carried away and out in the car.
I was carried out, at arms length, by the scruff of the neck, still kicking, scratching and biting like a sack of kittens on the way to the canal by a very, very angry man.
Ah! The 1970’s.
Before we knew Candyfloss was basically Crystal Meth for my seven-year-old self.

Getting The Grin On

The Monday of half term looked pretty much like this!

Poor Crisp-e has some kind of 'flu. So his 'bring a bottle' was Benylin for chesty coughs, which he swigged straight from source.
Hardcore.

Mad Matt has to have one of THE smiliest faces ever. I never have any trouble 'reading' Matt because most of the time he looks like this!




Ah. Yes. Well.
Much of the time I look like this.
Especially around these people!

The 30th Sunday Of The Year

I have decided that I am not suited to the 10.15am ‘Children Screaming’ Mass.
It’s going to be the 8.30am ‘Geriatric’ Mass from now on.
Of the four hymns, I knew one. I’m far too morose for that Happy Clappy shit.
It’s all too distracting.
When I found myself wondering if Ryan Giggs would get his 100th League goal against Liverpool, or what would go with Sheherazade as a middle name, I knew it was time for a change.

At the end, there was a brief mention of the Protestants, Anglicans, or whatever the fuck they call themselves, becoming Catholics.
I’m not sure what his point was but he went on about them being like the Coptic’s or Eastern Orthodox types.
All I was thinking was,
‘Fuck off! Fuck off! Why the fuck should we have them?’
Then I got that Statue of Liberty quote bouncing around my head, ‘Give me your tired, your poor..’.
I can see his Nazi-ness on the balcony overlooking the square saying,

“Give me your bigots, your misogynists, heretics yearning to breathe free incense.
The wretched Apostates of your teeming Synods send these, the homophobic, intemperate tossers to me.”

Yeah. Great.
Like there aren’t enough of those in the Catholic Church already.
Could give a nice loophole for a married Priesthood though.
They just have to be ordained as a Vicar first, get married, then ‘convert’.
I know my Proddy and/or Anglican friends will be delighted at the chance to get rid of their twats but can’t they just fuck off on their own somewhere?

I don't have much to say about the Nick Griffin/BNP/Question Time thing, not because I don't have an opinion about it but because of the quote attributed to Voltaire,
"I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it."
To be honest, I'd rather have my racists out in the open. He'll draw them out for us.
The BNP aren't getting more members, it's just they are 'coming out' now.
Having watched Question Time quite a few times I have to admit I've never seen a more ethnically diverse audience, ever.


I caught enough of Blade 3 last night to hear one of my favourite insults.
“….. you cock juggling, thunder cunt!”.
Lovely.
I hope that sticks in my head somewhere and comes out years from now.

Break

Well, my brief flirtation with Facebook is over, after a rather public ‘Psychotic Break’ on Sunday. I visited my Dad and for the first time he looked horrendous.
What frightened me more was that he had ‘the smell’.
If you’ve ever been around someone with cancer, you’ll know exactly what I mean.
It suddenly hit me like a fucking train that we going to lose him.
That at some point my beacon of calm will be gone.
I got home and started tucking into a bottle of vodka when Cousin Adamski ‘phoned, in tears.
Had an extremely emotional and tearful conversation with him and continued with the vodka.
In absolute honesty, that conversation is the last thing I remember until the morning.
They say, ‘in vino veritas’. In Vodka, there is vitriol.
I upset my brother. I upset my nephew and frighteningly, I amused my niece.
I wrote them all letters of apology.
I am gutted with myself.
The utter loss of control… It makes me feel sick.
Strangely, I feel really calm.
A calm I’m not totally sure I’ve felt before and I am not certain if it should be a concern or not.
It’s similar to Ritalin but without the ‘thinking through cotton wool’ effect.

Right.
Finished.
Next.

What I really need to know at the moment, is how to wash a Cashmere cardigan while still keeping it soft.
If it gets all scratchy and itchy I won't be able to wear it anymore and I really like it!

Great

At 5.30 yesterday morning I became a Great Aunt.
My fifteen year old niece gave birth to a boy.
I’d really love to say that I’m pleased for her, but I’d be lying.
In all honesty, I’m embarrassed.
My mother is a Great Grandmother at 57 and my sister a Grandparent at 38.
As my Nan would say, ‘Common’.
Thank fuck it’s a boy, or in a decade or so I’d be seeing one of those horrendous ‘Five generations of the same family’ photos in the local paper.

Crime And Punishment

A few weeks ago, Housemate Claire got herself a bike.
She uses two locks to attach to the railings from inside the forecourt.
Thursday night I heard a little bit of commotion and then the gate bang.
I swear I was up, grabbed my trusty bat and was out of the door in about 10 seconds.
Bike gone and not a fucking soul to be seen.
Fucking miraculous you would think.
Not me.
I’m sure I’ve mentioned the ‘Benefit Bedsit’ house 3 doors along.
I feel the bike didn’t go far.
Being the only one in, I phoned the police.
I fecking HATE contacting the police. No need to draw attention unnecessarily is there? And as Brendan Behan said,
‘I’ve never seen a situation so dismal that it couldn’t be made worse by a policeman’.
We still have seen no police people, nor do we expect to!
(Fingers crossed)

Friday I travelled to ‘Bandit Country’ to help out our ‘5th Column’ there.
A body in the house to let in the Trades.
Last weekend a load of pissed up ‘youths’ lobbed a brick through the glass roof on Mr & Mrs Crisp-e’s conservatory.
The police found a group of pissed up ‘youths’ in the area but couldn’t be sure they were THE pissed up ‘youths’, so they were let go.
Brilliant.
Not a good couple of weeks for any of us crime wise.
Bastards.

I got a taxi there and the driver turned out to be a parent of a particularly horrible ex pupil.
He went on about the youngest, who is now at the school.
A right delight he sounds too.
"Yeah, two detentions in the first fuckin' week him! All about shoes..."
Here he went off on the usual rant.
Fortunately, we pulled up at Crisp-e's.
As I got out I leant back in and said,
'By the way your J...... was a vile, thick cunt. I'm gobsmacked he's not in prison to tell the truth! Anyway, give him my regards. Bye!"
I slammed the door and fucked off without a backwards glance.

I told Sassy about our bout of bad luck.
Her litany of punishments, which could be described as an extreme form of Liberal Despotism, fell just short of a nationwide eugenics programme!
More troubling was that it all made perfect sense to me.

Care In The Community

I didn’t sleep at all last night so today has been a bit floaty and odd.
It has slashed it with rain more or less constantly.
Miss H, the Octogenarian lesbian caught me.
I was supposed to be out for less than 10 minutes.
I have got to stop using the shop next door to the post office. That place is Catnip to the over 70’s.
Yet again, her arm was through mine, I was turned through 180 degrees and magically I was carrying her shopping.
She was giving me the usual arm squeezing when she decided to announce to the world that I had lost a lot of weight, she could feel my muscles and it was sexy.
She was SO loud. Deaf school loud.
I steered her into the ‘£’ shop and got her some hearing aid batteries!
It was while we were in here she decided to notice that the arse of my jeans was a little baggy.
“Christ! Where’s your backside gone? You had a lovely backside, you did. Come here let me feel it.”
Heads started popping out from behind shelves.
The women on the till could barely contain themselves.
“Miss H! Have a heart will you! Just let me pay for these and fix your 'sounds' before you speak anymore!”
The till women totally lost it at that point and I had to have a smile.
I did the battery and we were on our way again but now she kept grabbing at my arse.
It’s difficult to get just far enough ahead to be out of reach but not so far as to be rude.
When we got to her gate, she asked if I would come help do something with the settings on the catflap.
I looked at her and she had this huge grin.
“Miss H, are you trying to get me to bend over?”
She totally creased up and so did I.
I told her she was incorrigible, came home and have smiled about it most of the day.

Reunited

The school reunion.
Well, it wasn’t quite as I had expected.
I got hold of my best mate from that time and we went together.
She made me promise not to punch anyone as she is still pretty shite at fighting, as I did it all at school.
We fortified ourselves with Vodka and arrived about an hour into proceedings.
As we walked through the door C calls, ‘eyes left’ and there they were.
Our bullies.
By the time we got to the bar our faces hurt from grinning.
We ordered our drinks, turned to each other, chinked glasses and toasted,
‘THEY ARE FUCKING FAT!’
There is a possibility that we may have done a little dance on the spot too!
We knew we were in for a good night.
One tried to stare for a while until I mouthed, ‘Problem?’ and she didn’t look at us again.
I bumped into two of my early forays into the world of lesbianism.
Got a number from one and a partial fumble from the other!
It surprised us both how well remembered we were.
We cried with laughter when some of the lard arses got up to strut their funky stuff to ‘Tainted Love’.
C and I waded in amongst them and swung are slender hips to Madness, to the cheers and applause of the 1985 Hockey team.

The Deputy Head came and found me while I was having a smoke.
‘Sleepy McTired?’
I laughed and told him I used to be.
‘I remember you. You had a fucking horrible childhood. I’ll never forget the day your Mother and your uncle dragged you out of school. I saw the state of you when you came back. I’m so very sorry.’
He patted me on the shoulder told me it was good to see me looking so well and fucked off.
I swear to Christ I was stood there with my mouth hanging open.
Somehow I was convinced no one knew just how shit it all was back then.
Floored me a bit.

Nothing much has changed.
The Catholic Church is still hating me and I’m hating it right back.
Father P thinks he can refuse to hear my confession, I will be disabusing him of this in a few hours.
I urge you all to read Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy.